Armed Forces Redundancies
Debate between Mark Francois and Crispin Blunt(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Francois
I should say that this process not only affects our regular armed forces. Civilians in the Ministry of Defence are affected by a parallel programme—I think that by 2015 we will have reduced our number of civilians by approximately 33%. It would be unfair to say that our regular forces are bearing the brunt of the process while our civil service work force are not, because they are being affected in parallel.
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
In conducting this wretchedly painful exercise—for reasons that we all understand—which is often heartbreaking at unit level, will the Minister confirm that his duty is to the future shape of the armed forces, that they have the best possible collection of experience and ability to shape manpower and that this will mean making people redundant who do not apply for it? That is a necessary difficulty that, if he is to exercise his duty, we have to face up to.
Mr Francois
I thank my hon. Friend for the spirit of his question. In the Ministry of Defence we are ultimately responsible for the defence of the realm, but as I hope he and the House will accept, I fully appreciate as someone who has served in uniform the difficult side of what we are having to do today. We completely understand that. We are therefore doing our best to proceed as sympathetically and fairly as possible; but we must configure our armed forces for the defence of our country and achieve the target set out in Future Force 2020.